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The Ethno-Necrocratic State: Mamillah and the Afterlives of Ethnocracy in Israel
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

The Ethno-Necrocratic State: Mamillah and the Afterlives of Ethnocracy in Israel

Meriam N. Belli
International journal of Middle East studies, Vol.54(4), pp.623-646
10/06/2022
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743822000526
url
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743822000526View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Using the unique and historic Islamic cemetery of Mamillah in Jerusalem as a primary example, this essay discusses the ethno-necrocratic order that led to the 2008 Israeli High Court of Justice's codification of the supremacy of Jewish bodies and afterlives over non-Jewish ones, on the basis of advancing Israel's values. Hundreds of Palestinian burial grounds, starting with village cemeteries, have been destroyed since 1948. Indeed, funerary sites have testified to the omnipresence and millenarian existence of a population that the state has sought to erase from memory. In a few decades, the deathscape was radically altered, in cities as in the countryside. Although real estate corruption plagues Israeli politics, land use planning and real estate capitalism are inseparable from the ethno-racial politics of exclusion, which affect both the dead and the living.
Area Studies Social Sciences UIOWA OA Agreement

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